Derailed

by Leena Lehtolainen

  I asked again about visiting the kitchen and received the same answer. Harju was facing unemployment, and I didn’t entirely swallow his story about his back going out being the reason why he left his original job. I thought it was more likely that he’d gotten canned for drinking. Out of everyone at the campaign launch who might have been hired to poison either Pentti Vainikainen or Jutta Särkikoski, I’d put my money on Harju. I said as much to Koivu once we’d let Harju go.

  “I had the same thought,” Koivu replied and rubbed his temples. “I need to get stronger glasses. I can’t see a thing, and my head always hurts. But who would have bribed Harju to poison Vainikainen? The wife?”

  “That’d be my guess. Maybe we should look into what kind of company Harju keeps. I’ll tell Puupponen.”

  Puupponen was sitting in the conference room, and there was no sign of Ursula. I headed for the ladies’ room, and as I walked into the hallway, I nearly ran into Taskinen.

  “Good morning, Maria! How are you getting along?” Taskinen tried his best to look encouraging. My own face reflexively contracted into a scowl.

  “No breakthrough yet. The cause of death isn’t certain, but we still suspect nicotine poisoning. We’re trying to interview all the key witnesses today.”

  “Do you have time for lunch?”

  “Not by a mile. I have more interviews,” I said, glad for the excuse. I was angry more at myself than Taskinen. I just should have said no and held to it. I pushed past him and walked to the bathroom, since he wouldn’t dare follow me there.

  Inside I found Ursula. She was touching up her already devastatingly glossy red lips, looking satisfied.

  “I never would have thought we’d end up as pogo sisters,” she said, giving a crooked smile. “Kristian sure is great. I like a man with balls, if you know what I mean. I’d thought I would find real men at the police academy, but nowadays the recruits are mostly a bunch of pansies. But Kristian has some kick to him.”

  “Well, then he’s learned a lot since the late eighties,” I replied and immediately regretted it. Ursula cackled.

  “Do you want to hear what he says about you? Or . . . maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t want to be accused of sexually harassing my boss or something.” She snapped the cap on her lipstick and walked out. The clicking of her heels echoed far down the hall.

  Kristian had left me, partially, because he couldn’t stand that I scored better on tests than he did. I hadn’t been too upset about it. We were so different, and Kristian had expected more traditionally feminine behavior than I was capable of. We were just kids then, and I was infatuated with Kristian’s exoticism. You didn’t run into Swedish-speaking Finns in my hometown. Now it just amused me that Kristian had apparently felt the need to belittle me. I’d heard that he’d spent the past few years working for the EU’s criminal division as a consulting official, and I imagined that he was stationed in Brussels. Ursula would be sure to bring me up to speed with his current activities, whether I wanted her to or not.

  The coffee maker was percolating in the conference room by the time I returned. Ilpo Koskelo and Toni Väärä had arrived at the Espoo station, and Puupponen had directed them to take a taxi here. I ordered Puupponen and Ursula to question Koskelo first, while Koivu and I took Väärä.

  “You two be the bad cops, and then Koivu and I can be the good cops,” I suggested. “Koskelo has been coaching part-time for decades, so he’s been in contact with Pentti Vainikainen longer than anyone else, even Merja Vainikainen. Try to dig into that. Possible enemies, scandals, or other dirt. I’d also like to hear about how Merja and Pentti Vainikainen’s romance started. If it caused any bad blood, et cetera.”

  “You don’t have to hold our hands! We’ve been doing just fine here without your micromanaging,” Ursula snapped again. For some reason I found her outburst funny—I did my best not to smile.

  I returned to my office and called Merja Vainikainen. She answered on the third ring. Her voice was tentative, maybe expecting it to be someone from the media.

  “You accused Hillevi Litmanen of putting poison in your husband’s coffee. What made you suspect that?”

  Merja was silent for a long time. “I don’t remember anything like that . . . When did I say that?”

  “Wednesday. The day after Pentti died.”

  Merja was silent again, and then she sighed. “I may have said that. I don’t remember. I didn’t sleep at all Tuesday night, and I must have been confused. I didn’t really mean it. I was just trying to figure out what Hillevi put in the coffee and the sandwiches. She’s such a scatterbrain. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were an accident and she caused it. I don’t believe she would intentionally kill someone. What I’d like to know is why didn’t the police notify me about the poison? Why did I have to read that it was nicotine in the newspaper?”

  “For the time being, that’s unsubstantiated,” I said, then immediately realized my mistake. The next of kin weren’t supposed to learn these sorts of details, however unsubstantiated, from the media; she should have heard it directly from me. My investigation skills were rusty, that much was clear. Merja Vainikainen accepted my awkward apology with grace.

  A moment after I hung up, the duty officer announced that Väärä and Koskelo were downstairs, and I sent Koivu to fetch them. I’d make a show of my authority by waiting for Toni Väärä in my office. If the two men had something to hide, they would have had plenty of time to get their story straight even before the train ride. I heard them approach, and then Koivu knocked on my door.

  “Lieutenant, may we come in?”

  “Enter!”

  Koivu nearly shoved the shy-looking young man into the office. I’d seen Toni Väärä run on TV, and his shy smile in press pictures. In the real world, he seemed fragile and younger than his twenty-one years. He was the kind of man you could pick out as a Finn in any airport in the world. The skin of his bony face was pallid, and all that was left of his summer tan was a slight browning on his high cheekbones and the end of his narrow nose. His hair was blond, thin, and stiff, and stuck up all over his head. The blue of his eyes was pale. He’d obviously bought his jeans and hoodie from the nearest department store, but his shoes were from his sponsor. Toni Väärä looked like a young man who didn’t want to attract attention.

  I asked whether Väärä wanted coffee, but he had his own sports drink with him. He poured some in a glass and politely offered us some as well. Koivu took a cupful, then moved to the chair by the wall. Väärä sat down on the sofa. I tried to look at him as sternly as a principal questioning the only witness of a bathroom hazing incident. According to Jutta, Toni thought that the purpose of the accident was to hurt him, not Jutta. But I didn’t start with that. Instead I asked Väärä’s impressions of the MobAbility campaign launch, just to get the ball rolling.

  “I was so nervous about my own presentation that I couldn’t pay much attention to anything else until it was over. I’ve never liked being in front of cameras. Jutta talked for a while and then Tapani Ristiluoma. The mood got better once the reporters left. There were toasts, and then we ate, and then suddenly Pentti started moaning and having a fit. It was horrible. It reminded me of the time one of my little sisters tried a red poisonous mushroom . . . Mom shoved her fingers down her throat and made her throw up.”

  “Do you have many siblings?”

  “There are twelve of us. I’m the third oldest and the oldest boy.”

  “That’s a pretty big family.” I remembered that Väärä was from somewhere in Ostrobothnia, the Wild West of Finland, known for its knife fighters, religious fervor, and high proportion of Swedish speakers. “Did you know everyone who stayed after the reporters left?”

  “I did, more or less, although I’ve never talked to Hillevi Litmanen. She’s so shy.” For some reason Väärä blushed. “And then there was that tall guy, Miikka. He talks a lot, and he’s sort of . . . curious. He kept asking the whole time about my recovery as if it was the most important thing in the world.�
��

  “Isn’t it?” Koivu asked, but I didn’t let Väärä answer.

  “According to Jutta Särkikoski, you suspected that the accident was an attack on you. What made you think that?”

  Väärä looked miserable and didn’t answer. He just squeezed his sports-drink bottle as if it was some sort of talisman. I asked the question again. The answer came out of Väärä’s mouth very slowly.

  “Maybe I exaggerated a bit . . . It was such an awful thing . . . the accident. Just after I set my record and everything. Although maybe there was something good about it too, since I got some time to myself. Setting that record caused so much excitement, and it wasn’t all fun.”

  “Why not? You were a hero.”

  Väärä’s wandering gaze met mine for a moment, and I saw a flash of anger. “The newspapers hounded me constantly! ‘Oh, you’re religious? What church do you belong to? Do you have a girlfriend? What, no? Aren’t you allowed to date? So sports is your life?’ Garbage like that. And then Pentti . . .” Now the young man blushed even redder. “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I know that, but Pentti . . . well, we had a fight, and I think he was the one who sent that van after us. It was a good plan, since he could take revenge on me and Jutta at the same time, even though she’d done the right thing.”

  Väärä stopped abruptly and took a swig from his bottle. I tried to make sense of his download. Koivu managed to fashion a question first.

  “Why did you suspect that Pentti Vainikainen wanted to hurt you?”

  Väärä wrung his hands and then asked, “Do I have to answer?”

  “You’re being interviewed as a witness to a homicide. Lying would be a crime,” I said, taking back control of the interview.

  “So you don’t suspect me of poisoning Pentti . . . or was it meant for Jutta?”

  “Should we suspect you?”

  “No! I didn’t do anything.”

  I let Väärä pause and indicated to Koivu with a glance that he should do the same. Väärä clearly wasn’t the kind of athlete who could come straight from a race and give a detailed statement about his own and his competitor’s tactics.

  “I just thought that Pentti didn’t want me to talk about . . . the offer. I guess he was afraid I’d talk to Jutta about it, and she’d put two and two together. Pentti came to my hotel room after the Sweden meet. My roommate was somewhere celebrating, but I don’t drink alcohol, and I’m not interested in parties anyway. Pentti said that Ilpo is a perfectly good coach, but that his last real accomplishments were in the eighties. In the 2000s you need new methods to succeed. And that would put me on the highway to heaven. Sponsors, professional coaching, a nice car, women . . .” Toni Väärä laughed and then fell silent.

  I remembered what Jutta had said about the discus throwers she nailed for doping. “You might get confused about the line between right and wrong, especially if someone comes along promising a shortcut to success.” Toni leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms, his slender wrists poking out of the sleeves of his hoodie.

  “Pentti asked if I could keep a secret, then told me that the federation was founding a new, modern biomedical training project for promising distance runners. They already had sponsors behind it, big companies. Help was coming from Norway, from the same guys who took Vebjørn Rodal and Geir Moen to the top in the nineties.”

  I laughed before I could stop myself. I thought Moen had been an extremely attractive athlete, but I surely wasn’t the only one who had wondered how his incredible improvements had been possible.

  “I asked whether we could try this biomedical thing with Ilpo. Pentti said no, that it required special training that someone Ilpo’s age wouldn’t have time to learn. But I couldn’t tell Ilpo that. Of course, I could think about it—I didn’t have to decide right then. But wouldn’t it be amazing to stand on the top podium and listen to the national anthem?” Toni grimaced. “I didn’t even have the sense to ask what ‘biomedical training’ really meant, and it never even crossed my mind that the federation would suggest doing anything illegal.”

  I didn’t respond, giving him time to think. Väärä took a sip from his bottle. He obviously wasn’t the kind of person to rush. He was only fast on the track.

  “The day before Jutta was scheduled to interview me, Pentti called and warned me against saying anything about our conversation. He said she would take everything out of context. The best thing would be to cancel the interview. I could claim I had the flu.”

  “How did Vainikainen know that Jutta Särkikoski was coming to interview you?”

  “He heard about the sponsor event and that I was going to be getting a ride in her car. That van started following us pretty soon after we dropped off the photographer in Kisko, when Jutta and me were alone. It was like someone didn’t want us talking . . .”

  “Before the accident, did you have a chance to tell Ilpo Koskelo that you were considering changing coaches?”

  “No! And now I wish I had. All you have now is my word, since Pentti is dead. But so many things were going on, and I was pretty messed up after the accident, and I didn’t know how fast I would recover . . . or if I’d recover at all. And Vainikainen never brought it up again. I only saw him a couple of times before the event on Tuesday. Ilpo handled things with the federation.”

  “How much do you remember about the crash?”

  “Not much. The roads were terrible, and I didn’t really trust Jutta’s driving. Not because she’s a woman, but because I’d never driven with her before, and I’d heard that there were lots of moose on that road. It was like I sensed the trip was going to end badly. Probably it had something to do with Pentti’s warning. But the strangest thing was that Ilpo didn’t want me driving with Jutta under any circumstances. He told me to take the train to Helsinki. As if he knew something. I’ve thought and thought what that could be, and sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy. But I don’t understand, and I don’t remember. If only I’d seen who was driving the van, and maybe I did. But now all I see is blackness and—” Suddenly Väärä stopped talking, on the verge of tears. Koivu looked at me in confusion.

  “I don’t even know if I want to recover and start the climb back to the top. Not if it’s going to be like this. I now understand what he meant by biomedical training, even if I didn’t at the time. What do I know? Maybe Ilpo was part of it too. What if now they’re feeding me something that I don’t even know is banned? But what choice do I have? If I don’t succeed, I lose my sponsors. If I do succeed, I don’t get to have my own life. It’s like I’m public property. Everyone expects me to win, and if I fail, they’ll laugh at me.” Väärä took a deep breath and looked me in the eye. “I don’t know what happened at MobAbility, but I think something evil was present. Something I don’t want to be a part of. Ever.”

  9

  “So, evil, huh?” Koivu said once the door had closed after Toni Väärä, and Ursula and Puupponen had joined us.

  “What church does Väärä belong to, the Laestadians?” Puupponen said, taking a seat on the sofa. Ursula joined him. “Twelve kids in the family, coming from Ostrobothnia . . .”

  “Yes, maybe so. But few Finnish athletes are openly religious, except at the end of their careers when they find religion and decide to confess their sins, like doping.”

  “Don’t forget Matti Nykänen. He doesn’t regret anything, not the drinking, not the bar brawls, not the restraining orders,” Puupponen said. “That’s my kind of athlete—follows the road he chose to the bitter end.”

  Koivu laughed, and Ursula looked bored. I steered the conversation back to Väärä and Koskelo, who were both waiting in the conference room. When I’d asked Väärä what he thought they might be feeding him without his knowledge, he said he just meant that you could never trust anyone completely, not even doctors. So far Ursula and Puupponen had mostly asked Koskelo about Pentti Vainikainen. Now sixty-three, Koskelo had started his coaching career around the time Vainikainen was retiring from running and moving ov
er to the administrative side of sports. According to Koskelo, Vainikainen hadn’t been a prodigy and had earned his success through hard work. He was also well-liked and a good networker. A talent for making friends with important politicians and sports figures hadn’t hurt his career prospects in the industry.

  “Last year Vainikainen attended one of the government’s National Defense Courses. That has to say something about his social standing,” Ursula said. “He and Koskelo weren’t close friends by any means, but they respected each other.”

  “Toni Väärä paints a different picture,” I said. “Specifically, about what Vainikainen thought of Koskelo.”

  “Väärä hinted that Vainikainen encouraged athletes to dope,” Koivu said. “Wouldn’t that be reason enough for some people to want to get rid of him? What if he was endangering the reputation of Finnish sports?”

  “Then all they had to do was fire him. That’s how they ‘cleaned up’ the Ski Association,” Puupponen said, stretching his arms over his head. Ursula glowered at him as if he’d done something obscene. “Remember Kyrö and Petäjä? They got the boot, but all the other old white guys in charge must have known what was going on long before the Lahti scandal broke. Just like how the Athletics Federation bigwigs pretended to be in the dark about what Salo and Terävä were up to. That’s reality, Pekka! Everyone uses. Some of them just have access to drugs that don’t show up in the tests.”

  Ursula seemed contemplative. She rolled a pen between her lips in a way that was downright pornographic. I saw Puupponen look at her, and then his mouth twitch.

  “OK . . . so we’re back to Salo and Terävä,” Ursula said. “They swore they got their growth hormones from Estonia, without the blessing of the federation or their coaches. The public had to believe them because there was no evidence otherwise, and Jutta Särkikoski refused to reveal her sources. And then we come to the fact that Tapani Ristiluoma is Sami Terävä’s cousin. Shouldn’t we question Terävä too?”